About Custom Actions

Object-specific custom actions are Visualforce pages that let users interact with or create records that have a relationship to an object record. The Visualforce page for an object-specific custom action must include the standard controller for the relevant object. For example, if you want to create a custom action that lets users import a contact’s Twitter profile and add that information to a contact record, you need to use the standard contact controller.

Use a Visualforce page or a canvas app to create a global custom action for tasks that don’t require users to interact with or create records that have a relationship to a specific object. Visualforce pages you want to use as global custom actions can’t use standard controllers. For example, if you want to create a custom action that lets users enter a street address and see a map, the local time, and the local weather, create a Visualforce page that doesn’t use any of the standard controllers, and add it as a custom global action. Canvas apps you want to use as custom actions need to use Publisher as a location.

We can’t create custom actions with point-and-click, so we won’t be working with them in our exercises here. If you want to find out more about custom actions, see the Adding Functionality with Visualforce Custom Actions chapter of the Salesforce1 App Developer Guide.